Quick recap of the first cabin build (with video)

For most of my adult life I’d dreamed of having a cabin in the woods. I’d occasionally looked at properties but nothing ever panned out. It was always too far away from home/work, out of budget or just not the right property. One day in May of 2022, a listing on Facebook Marketplace caught my eye. It was in the east Texas piney woods just shy of 2 hours from home, 4 1/2 acres of heavily wooded land in a sparsely populated area, and the price was right. I sent a message and soon had GPS coordinates to go take a look at it. My ex wife Stacey and I went out that weekend and fell in love with the place. Tall pine and oak trees, no neighbors nearby, it was the perfect place to build the cabin I’d always wanted! Stacey was onboard with jumping into this adventure so we made a deal for the land, closed in August and made a trip out there the next weekend to camp and start clearing.

We picked a spot for an entrance and started cutting brush out of the way. By the end of the day we had a half-decent driveway entrance and had flattened out an area for our tent. This place immediately felt like home. We went out almost every weekend that summer and fall to clear and prepare for our cabin build. We eventually built a small shed to sleep and store tools in, with the idea of having it as a storage shed once we got the cabin built. I put solar panels on the roof and a small inverter with a few batteries inside to provide power for tools without having to run the generator constantly. Then one fateful day I got a call from a sheriff’s deputy telling me that the shed had caught fire, that it was a total loss and that they couldn’t determine what had started the fire. I’ll always suspect a faulty charge controller, considering I’d used a cheap one I bought on Amazon (I’ll never make that mistake again!)

We went out the following weekend to find that it was indeed a TOTAL loss. Everything I’d built and all the supplies and power tools I had stored in the shed were a pile of ashes. Broken and melted glass from the solar panels was everywhere. We cleaned up the mess and spent the rest of the weekend clearing and finding the ideal spot for the cabin. Within a few weekends we had a spot cleared and leveled and started the foundation. I wanted solar power but due to the tall trees, we needed some elevation in order to get adequate sunlight. So I decided on a single story cabin with an elevated deck above it, and a solar platform above that.

To accomplish this, I bought 8 25-fooot long pieces of extra heavy wall 2 1/2″ steel square tubing and used it for columns. We drilled 3′ deep pier holes and set the columns in concrete. This put the tops of the columns at 22′ which was right at the treetops where we wanted to be. The columns were tied together with 6″ purlins at floor level, 4′ above floor level and at ceiling height. We used 6″ I-beam to support the roof, with more 6″ purlins perpendicular on top to attach the R-panel roof. Within a few more weekends we had a roof and the entire building was wrapped with a foil bubble wrap for vapor barrier. It was starting to look like a cabin!

It was about this time that Stacey and I separated. The loss of income put a bit of a damper on the project but I kept going. This was my lifelong dream and I wasn’t going to let it slip away. A friend from work went out and helped me get the siding installed as well as quite a few other tasks that required help. Before long I went out and installed wiring, lights, inverter and batteries. I hadn’t framed the upstairs area yet so I couldn’t install solar panels. I used the generator to charge the batteries then ran off of them til they needed charging again. Now the cabin was habitable and had a useable shower and toilet. Next step: framing for the solar panels. I framed the deck with 6″ purlins and then covered it with scrap plywood I’d gotten cheap. I did this because I was going to be welding above the deck and didn’t want to damage deck boards. I built a steel frame at the top of the columns and installed runners for the solar panels, all in 6″ purlin and all welded. I built an elevator using an electric winch and a cage to get the solar panels to the top. I installed all 24 panels and tied them into my inverter. Finally, I was making my own power! I went home that Sunday as happy as could be.

Tuesday morning I got a notification from the trail camera on the driveway saying there was human activity detected. When I looked at the pictures I saw 2 men in a Dodge truck loading up my concrete mixer. The camera at the cabin had lost signal and wasn’t transmitting photos. I had no idea what all they might have stolen. I left work and raced out to the cabin right away. When I got there I found that they had cut the cable on my gate and taken not only the mixer but my trailer, welding machine, generator, log splitter, wood chipper, chainsaw and a toolbox with some power tools. To this day law enforcement hasn’t found them or my stuff. At least they waited to steal my generator til I had the solar panels installed!

And the rest is just a whole lot of hard work. Sadly I didn’t take a lot of pictures or video during this build, but I did manage to piece together a pretty good recap video: